Medical matrimony: Brian and Lori Harrington

With both having a connection to the U.S. Army, Dr. Brian Harrington thought he and his future wife, Lori Harrington, also a medical doctor, would have an immediate connection at Dartmouth Medical School.

He was wrong. It was not until a snowshoe outing in February of their first year of med school that the two started dating. Then, after finishing their careers in the Army, Brian and Lori moved to Steamboat, where they've lived for the past 10 years.

The move was made with family in mind, but they quickly discovered the town has a lot to offer on the medical side.

“Steamboat turned out to be a pleasant surprise in that it offered a vibrant medical community with excellent physicians in many specialties and a top quality hospital,” Brian says. “The community offers much more in medical services than a typical small rural town of our size.”

Brian, a partner with Yampa Valley Medical Associates, grew up in a small town in Nebraska so his idea of a physician was always the family doctor.

“In medical school I liked just about every area I studied, so I wanted my medical practice to include all ages, genders and organ systems,” he says. “So, I chose to go into family medicine, where I could take care of the whole person from birth to old age. I also was attracted to the community health aspect of family medicine.”

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Lori, an orthopedic surgeon, was drawn to her line of work through her love of sports.

Apart from their busy careers, the couple is raising four children, with their oldest daughter just graduating from Steamboat Springs High School. “We wanted to be in a smaller community for the sake of our children and had always desired to live in a Colorado mountain town,” Brian says.

They add that when a couple is in the same profession and work at the same place, work and personal life tend to blend together.

“Medicine for us is difficult to do 'half time' or within certain hours of the day,” Brian says. “We chose to live in a small town where we'd know people, and accepted that discussing medicine with friends, at social events or in the grocery store is just part of small-town life.”